An amphibian writer, translator, poltergeist,researcher... my doppelganger pretends to be a Professor of English, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara.

Saturday, May 5, 2007

The Year of Amogh

On the first of May, I completed one year as Reader in the Dept of English, MS University and it has surely been a very busy year indeed. Plenty of non-curricular activities. I was on various committees and doing all sorts of things apart from teaching. This was also a year of The Return of the Repressed: the good old Asthma. It was also a year away from Valsad and I am not feeling home sick at all. It was also a year of tackling my depression.

Guess what have I discovered after intensive counseling? That I need to look after my mental and physical health, and to look after my relationships. I have neglected or avoided looking at my life and I need to take on it rather than find subtle seductive ways of avoiding it. It was also a year of antidepressants.

I also discovered, rather lately too, that I am too much of `other-oriented' person. I allow other's to control my life, my emotion and to an extent my thoughts too. If someone avoids me or does not notice me, I feel hurt. Yes, Archana, Ashwini's friend was right to an extent when she said that I am addicted to attention from others and that I was attention hungry. Rather, I give too much importance to other's behavior. This is what has earned me the label of being`nice' as I am often worried about others moods.

Thinking too much about others has resulted in the neglect of my own feelings and emotions.

This was also the year of being reviled ,criticised and attacked as a writer and critic. These criticisms were launched by my contemporaries whom I thought were my friends. I had included them in Live Update. Result? I am labeled as `Pandit Kavi', as a poet without social awareness and what not. Disgusting.

This is also the year of Amogh going to school and surprisingly he doesn't cry and goes to school on his own in his Maruti van or auto rickshaw. It shows that the newer generations grow up faster than the preceding ones and that they remain children for smaller period too. They mature far too quickly compared to the preceding ones. His intelligence and his mischief has grown exponentially. I love him and he has brought happiness in my otherwise dark life.

In spite of all the grief and terrible hectic life, this is the year of Amogh. He is the light of my life. Three cheers to Shinchan aka Harry Potter of Vikram Baug aka Amogh!

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Sachin C. Ketkar (b. 1972) is a bilingual writer,
translator, editor, blogger and researcher based in Baroda, Gujarat. His recent
publication is a collection of Marathi critical articles on contemporary
Marathi Poetry, globalization and translation studies titled Changlya Kavitevarchi Statutory Warning:
Samkaleen Marathi Kavita, Jagatikikarn ani Bhashantar (2016). His Marathi
collections of poems are Jarasandhachya
Blogvarche Kahi Ansh (2010) and Bhintishivaicya Khidkitun Dokavtana, (2004). His poetry in English
include Skin, Spam and Other Fake
Encounters: Selected Marathi Poems in translation, (2011), and A Dirge for the Dead Dog and Other
Incantations (2003). Several of his writings on translation are published
as (Trans) Migrating Words: Refractions
on Indian Translation Studies (2010).

He has extensively translated from Marathi and
Gujarati.Most of his translations of
contemporary Marathi poetry are collected in the anthology Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry (2005) edited by
him. Along with numerous recent Gujarati writers, he has rendered the fifteenth
century Gujarati poet Narsinh Mehta into English for his doctoral research. He
has also translated the work of the well-known contemporary Gujarati writers
like Manilal Desai, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Bhupen Khakkar, Jayant Khatri, Mangal
Rathod, Jaydev Shukla, Rajesh Pandya, Rajendra Patel, Nazir Mansuri, Ajay
Sarvaiya and Mona Patrawala. He has also translated poems of Ted Hughes and
fiction by Jorge Luis Borges and Adam Thopre’s into Marathi. He won ‘Indian
Literature Poetry Translation Prize’, awarded by Indian Literature Journal,
Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi in 2000.

He holds a doctorate from VN South Gujarat
University, Surat and works as Professor in English, Faculty of Arts, The
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara. He is also Coordinator of
the department research project under UGC SAP DRS II on “Representing the
Region: Literary Discourses, Social Movements and Cultural Forms in Western
India, 1960-2000.